Let's talk about Kalista's ultimate (playability/clarity)
I've played with a couple Kalistas now, and a few things jump out at me (pun intended) regarding soulbound/ultimate:
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It's stated all over the place (including the Champion Spotlight) that the soulbound must accept the contract. In fact, they don't; you are stuck as the soulbound whether you like it or not. If Kalista starts the game by throwing her spear at your feet, you can run circles locked in the summoner platform or be completely afk; you're still gonna be soulbound. This wouldn't have any effect when Kalista makes a bad choice (e.g. misunderstands who the support is), except...
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There's huge troll potential with this ultimate, more than anything else in the game. While it's perfectly acceptable to be somewhat disruptive of a teammate's gameplay (e.g. a knockback that can make skillshots miss), This one is huge, because it interrupts whatever the soulbound is doing and stuns them briefly. I had a Kalista who thought it would be awesome to soulbound the jungle Hecarim - so from then on, any time I tried to initiate, when I saw a great opportunity to cast my Hecarim ultimate, Kalista saw a great opportunity too - so I get yanked out of my awesomely-set-up long-distance E, and now I have to wait a moment before I can "come out" of Kalista's ult - and what's the payoff? The enemy is slightly out of position vs. if I could have just ulted, the CC doesn't last as long, and it deals less damage - and now when I cast my ult everyone is even more out of position, unless I throw the kalista ult away. This happened twice before I convinced her to just stop casting her ult, and it's not acceptable from a gameplay perspective that an ally can so easily shut down my main gameplay (combo in with a big high-speed initiate) by being unskilled. A lack of skill in a teammate should never prevent you from even trying to play your champion the way you want to.
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There's a lack of clarity that you've even been ulted, and I think it mostly boils down to the lack of a distinctive sound effect. Kalista's ult is essentially silent in a teamfight, and the lack of a sound cue for the soulbound makes it easy to miss what's happening if your camera happens to be centered. In the Hecarim game I was right clicking madly, steering around a high-speed horse, and popped out of Kalista's ultimate before I even knew it had been cast, because Hecarim already has that Shadow Isles color scheme.
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The camera lock is a terrible idea. (It is on Sion too, but that's a different topic.) My favorite plays with Kalista are when I'm just outside of tether range, and no one has any idea I'm there, then... in, Kalista ult, pop out the far side ASAP, big close-range play! ...only that's really hard to do, because the camera lock prevents you from seeing anything on the far side of Kalista while you're being sucked in. There's no way to know the player positions when you're able to pop out because you're not allowed to look at them directly - so now you gamble: Do you right click and hope you got it right? Or do you give the enemy team the split-second they need to Flash or scatter by waiting until you can see and visually process the situation you're trying to jump into? No other move like this - thresh lanterns, pantheon ults, twisted fate ults, zac dives - absolutely no other move like this forces you, when you have vision, to close your eyes between starting the setup and letting loose.
How about everyone else? Do you think the soulbound/ult thing has been pulled off better than I'm letting on? Something I didn't mention that bugs you?
